[Footnote 63: Elle sera odieuse, suspecte, et dangereuse.—Renard to the Emperor: Rolls House MSS.]

Yet, as the ambassador trembled to know, a carelessness of consequences and an obstinate perseverance in a course which she believed to be right were the principal features in Mary's character. He wrote to her while she was still at Framlingham, using every argument which ought, as he considered, to prevail. He reminded her of the long and unavailing struggle of the emperor to bring back Germany out of heresy, where the obstinacy of the Romanists had been as mischievous to him as the fanaticism of the Lutherans. "Her duty to God was of course the first thing to be considered; but at such a time prudence was a part of that duty. The Protestant heresies had taken a hold deep and powerful upon her subjects. In London alone there were fifteen thousand French, Flemish, and German refugees, most of them headstrong and ungovernable enthusiasts. The country dreaded any fresh convulsions, and her majesty should remember that she had instructed him to tell the council that she was suspected unjustly, and had no thought of interfering with the existing settlement of the realm."[64]

[Footnote 64: Renard to Queen Mary, copy enclosed to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

With all his efforts, however, Renard could but bring the queen to consent to a few days' delay; and fearing that she would return to her purpose, he sent to the emperor a copy of his letter, which he urged him to follow up. Charles on the 29th replied again, lauding the ambassador's caution, and suggesting an argument more likely to weigh with his cousin than the soundest considerations of public policy. Edward had lived and died in heresy, and the Catholic services were intended only for the faithful sons of the Church.[65] He desired {p.027} Renard to remind her that those who had been her most valuable friends were known to hold opinions far from orthodox; and he once more implored her to be guided by parliament, and to take care that the parliament was free. She had asked whether she should imitate Northumberland and nominate the members of the House of Commons. He cautioned her against so dangerous an example; he advised her to let the counties and towns send deputies of their own choice; and if the writs were sent into Cornwall and the northern counties, which had remained most constant to the Catholic religion, these places might be expected to return persons who would support her own sentiments.[66]

[Footnote 65: Vous avez tres bien faict de desconseillier a la dicte Royne qu'elle fist les obseques du feu Roy, ce qu'elle peult tant plus delaisser avecque le repos de sa conscience, puisque comme escripvez il est decede soustenant jusques a la fin, selon, qu'il avoit este persuade de depuis sa jeunesse, les opinions de desvoyez de nostre ancienne religion: par ou l'on ne peult sans scrupule luy faire l'enterrement et obseques accoustumez en nostre dicte religion. Et est bien que l'ayez persuade par vostre dicte lettre a la dicte dilation.—Charles V. to Renard, July 29: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 66: Et il seroit a esperer que y appellant ceulx du Noort et de Cornuailles avec les autres comme ce sont ceulx qui sont demeurez plus ferme en la religion, et qui ont demonstre plus d'affection en son endroit qu'elle trouveroit envers iceulx pour tout ce qu'elle vouldroit ordonner plus de faveur.—Ibid.]

If the emperor had been equally earnest in urging Mary to consult the wishes of her subjects on her marriage, he would have been a truer friend to her than he proved to be. But prudential arguments produced no effect on the eager queen; Renard had warned her not to resist Northumberland; she had acted on her own judgment, and Northumberland was a prisoner, and she was on the throne. By her own will she was confident that she could equally well restore the mass, and in good time the pope's authority. The religious objection to the funeral was more telling, and on this point she hesitated. Meantime she began to move slowly towards London, and at the end of the month the reached her old house of Newhall in Essex, where she rested till the preparations were complete for her entry into the city.

The first point on which she had now to make up her mind concerned the persons with whom she was to carry on the government. The emperor was again clear in his advice, which here she found herself obliged to follow. She was forced to leave undisturbed in their authorities such of her brother's late ministers as had contributed to the revolution in her favour. Derby, Sussex, Bath, Oxford, who had hurried to her support at Framlingham, were her loyal subjects, whom she could afford to neglect, because she could depend upon their fidelity. Pembroke and Winchester, Arundel and Shrewsbury, Bedford, {p.028} Cobham, Cheyne, Petre, too powerful to affront, too uncertain to be trusted as subjects, she could only attach to herself by maintaining in their offices and emoluments. She would restore the Duke of Norfolk to the council; Gardiner should hold office again; and she could rely on the good faith of Paget, the ablest, as well as the most honest, of all the professional statesmen. But Norfolk was old, and the latitudinarian Paget and the bigoted Gardiner bore each other no good will; so that, when the queen had leisure to contemplate her position, it did not promise to be an easy one. She would have to govern with the assistance of men who were gorged with the spoils of the church, suspected of heresy, and at best indifferent to religion.

In Mary's absence, the lords in London carried on the government as they could on their own responsibility. On the 21st Courtenay was released from the Tower. Gardiner was offered liberty, but he waited to accept it from the queen's own hand. He rejoined the council, however, and on the first or second day of his return to the board, he agitated their deliberations by requiring the restoration of his house in Southwark, which had been appropriated to the Marquis of Northampton, and by reminding Pembroke that he was in possession of estates which had been stolen from the See of Winchester.

On the 25th Northumberland and Lord Ambrose Dudley were brought in from Cambridge, escorted by Grey and Arundel, with four hundred of the guard. Detachments of troops were posted all along the streets from Bishopsgate, where the duke would enter, to the Tower, to prevent the mob from tearing him in pieces. It was but twelve days since he had ridden out from that gate in the splendour of his power; he was now assailed from all sides with yells and execrations; bareheaded, with cap in hand, he bowed to the crowd as he rode on, as if to win some compassion from them; but so recent a humility could find no favour. His scarlet cloak was plucked from his back; the only sounds which greeted his ears were, "Traitor, traitor, death to the traitor!" He hid his face, sick at heart with shame, and Lord Ambrose, at the gate of the Tower, was seen to burst into tears.[67] Edwin Sandys, Northampton, Ridley, Lord Robert Dudley, the offending judges Cholmley and Montague, with many others, followed in the few next days. Montague had protested to the queen that he had acted only under compulsion, but his excuses were not fully received. Lady Northumberland {p.029} went to Newhall to beg for mercy for her sons, but Mary refused to admit her.[68]

[Footnote 67: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. Baoardo. Grey Friars' Chronicle.]

[Footnote 68: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

In general, however, there was no desire to press hard upon the prisoners. Few had been guilty in the first degree; in the second degree so many were guilty, that all could not be punished, and to make exceptions would be unjust and invidious. The emperor recommended a general pardon, from which the principal offenders only should be excluded, and Mary herself was as little inclined to harshness. Her present desire was to forget all that had passed, and take possession of her power for the objects nearest to her heart. Her chief embarrassment for the moment was from the overloyalty of her subjects. The old-fashioned lords and country gentlemen who had attended her with their retainers from Norfolk, remained encamped round Newhall, unable to persuade themselves that they could leave her with safety in the midst of the men who had been the ministers of the usurpation.[69]

[Footnote 69: Ibid.]

Her closest confidence the queen reserved for Renard. On the 28th of July she sent for him at midnight. On the 2nd of August he was again with her, and the chief subject of her thoughts was still the funeral. "She could not have her brother committed to the ground like a dog," she said. While her fortunes were uncertain, she allowed Renard to promise for her that she would make no changes in religion, but "she had now told the lords distinctly that she would not recognise any of the laws which had been passed in the minority,[70] and she intended to act boldly; timidity would only encourage the people to be insolent;" "the lords were all quarrelling among themselves, and accusing one another; she could not learn the truth on any point of the late conspiracy; she did not know who were guilty or who were innocent; and, amidst the distracted advices which were urged upon her, she could not tell whether she could safely venture to London or not; but outward acquiescence in {p.030} the course which she chose to follow she believed that she could compel, and she would govern as God should direct her. The emperor, she added, had written to her about her marriage, not specifying any particular person, but desiring her to think upon the subject. She had never desired to marry while princess, nor did she desire it now; but if it were for the interests of the church, she would do whatever he might advise."

[Footnote 70: She, perhaps, imagined that she was not exceeding her statutable right in the refusal. The 17th of the 28th of Henry VIII. empowered any one of the heirs to the crown named in the king's will, on arriving at the age of twenty-four, to repeal laws passed not only in his or her own minority; but under circumstances such as those which had actually occurred, where the first heir had died before coming of age. The 11th of the 1st of Edward VI. modified the act of Henry, limiting the power of repeal to the sovereign in whose own reign the law to be repealed had been passed. But this act of Edward's was, itself, passed in a minority, and Mary might urge that she might repeal that as well as any other statute passed in his reign in virtue of the act of her father.]

On this last point Renard knew more of the emperor's intentions than Mary, and was discreetly silent; on other point he used his influence wisely. He constrained her, with Charles's arguments, to relinquish her burial scheme. "Edward, as a heretic, should have a heretic funeral at Westminster Abbey; she need not be present, and might herself have a mass said for him in the Tower. As to removing to London, in his opinion she had better go thither at once, take possession of her throne, and send Northumberland to trial. Her brother's body ought to be examined also, that it might be ascertained whether he had been poisoned; and if poisoned, by whom and for what purpose."[71]

[Footnote 71: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

Mary rarely paused upon a resolution. Making up her mind that, as Renard said, it would be better for her to go to London, she set out thither the following day, Thursday, the 3rd of August. Excitement lent to her hard features an expression almost of beauty,[72] as she rode in the midst of a splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles. Elizabeth, escorted by two thousand horse and a retinue of ladies, was waiting to receive her outside the gates. The first in her congratulations, after the proclamation, yet fearful of giving offence, Elizabeth had written to ask if it was the queen's pleasure that she should appear in mourning; but the queen would have no mourning, nor would have others wear it in her presence. The sombre colours which of late years had clouded the court were to be banished at once and for ever; and with the dark colours, it seemed for a time as if old dislikes and suspicions were at the same time to pass away. The sisters embraced; the queen was warm and affectionate, kissing all the ladies in Elizabeth's train; and side by side the daughters of Henry VIII. rode through Aldgate at seven in the evening, amidst the shouts of the people, the thunder of cannon, and pealing of church bells.[73] At the Tower gates the old Duke of Norfolk, Gardiner, Courtenay, and the Duchess of Somerset {p.031} were seen kneeling as Mary approached. "These are my prisoners," she said as she alighted from her horse, and stooped and kissed them. Charmed by the enthusiastic reception and by the pleasant disappointment of her anxieties, she could find no room for hard thoughts of any one; so far was she softened, Renard wrote, that she could hardly be brought to consent to the necessary execution of justice. Against Northumberland himself she had no feeling of vindictiveness, and was chiefly anxious that he should be attended by a confessor; Northampton was certainly to be pardoned; Suffolk was already free; Northumberland should be spared, if possible; and, as to Lady Jane, justice forbade, she said, that an innocent girl should suffer for the crimes of others.[74]

[Footnote 72: "La beaute de visage plus que mediocre," are Renard's words to Charles.]

[Footnote 73: Renard; Noailles; Machyn; Grey Friars' Chronicle.]

[Footnote 74: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

The emperor had recommended mercy; but he had not advised a general indemnity, as Renard made haste to urge. The imperialist conception of clemency differed from the queen's; and the same timidity which had first made the ambassadors too prudent, now took the form of measured cruelty. Renard entreated that Lady Jane should not be spared; "conspirators required to be taught that for the principals in treason there was but one punishment; the duke must die, and the rival queen and her husband must die with him." "We set before her"—Renard's own hand is the witness against him—"the examples of Maximus and his son Victor, both executed by the Emperor Theodosius; Maximus, because he had usurped the purple; Victor, because, as the intended heir of his father, he might have been an occasion of danger had he lived."[75]

[Footnote 75: Et luy fust propose l'exemple de Maximus et Victor son filz que Theodose l'Empereur feit mourir pour s'estre attribue le nom d'Empereur par tyrannie et l'avoir voulu continuer en son diet filz Victor, escripvant l'histoire que l'on feit mourir le filz pour le scandale et danger qu'en eust peu advenir.—Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. For the story, see Gibbon, cap. xxvii.]

Looking also, as Renard was already doing, on the scenes which were around him, chiefly or solely as they might affect the interests of his master's son, he had been nervously struck by the entourage which surrounded Elizabeth and the popularity which she, as well as the queen, was evidently enjoying.

Elizabeth, now passing into womanhood, was the person to whom the affections of the liberal party in England most definitely tended. She was the heir-presumptive to the crown; in matters of religion she was opposed to the mass, and opposed as decidedly to factious and dogmatic Protestantism; while {p.032} from the caution with which she had kept aloof from political entanglements, it was clear that her brilliant intellectual abilities were not her only or her most formidable gifts. Already she shared the favour of the people with the queen. Let Mary offend them (and in the intended marriage offence would unquestionably have to be given), their entire hearts might be transferred to her. The public finger had pointed to Courtenay as the husband which England desired for the queen. When Courtenay should be set aside by Mary, he might be accepted by Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, it was rumoured, looked upon him with an eye of favour.[76] On all accounts, therefore, Elizabeth was dangerous. She was a figure on the stage whom Renard would gladly see removed; and a week or two later he bid Mary look to her, watch her, and catch her tripping if good fortune would so permit: "it was better to prevent than to be prevented."[77]

[Footnote 76: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 77: Signantment sembleroit que vostre majeste ne se deust confier en Madame Elizabeth que bien a point, et discouvrir sur ce qu'elle ne se voit en espoir d'entrer en regne, ne avoir voulu fleschir quant au point de la religion ny ouyr la messe; ce que l'on jugeoit elle deust faire pour la respect de vostre majeste, et pour les courtoysies dont elle use en son endroit encores qu'elle ny eust faict sinon l'assister et l'accompaigner. Et davantage l'on peult discouvrir comme elle se maintient en la nouvelle religion par practique, pour attirer et gaigner a sa devotion ceulx quilz sont de la dicte religion en s'en aider, si elle avoit intention de maligner; et jacois l'on se pourroit fourcompter quant a son intention, si est en ce commencement, qu'il est plus sure prevenir que d'estre prevenu et penser a ce que peult advenir; actendu que les objects sont evidens.—Les Ambassadeurs de l'Empereur a Marie, Reine d'Angleterre: Granvelle Papers, vol. ii. pp. 64-69.]

The queen did not close her ears to these evil whispers; but for the first few days after she came to the Tower her thoughts were chiefly occupied with religion, and her first active step was to release and to restore to their sees the deprived and imprisoned bishops. The first week in August, Ponet, by royal order, was ejected from Winchester, Ridley from London, and Scory from Chichester. The See of Durham was reconstituted. Tunstal, Day, and Heath were set at liberty, and returned to their dioceses. The Bishop of Ely was deposed from the chancellorship, and the seals were given to Gardiner. "On the 5th of August," says the Grey Friars' Chronicle, "at seven o'clock at night, Edmond Bonner came home from the Marshalsea like a bishop, and all the people by the wayside bade him welcome home, both man and woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him; and so he came to Paul's, and knelt on the {p.033} steps, and said his prayers, and the people rang the bells for joy."[78]

[Footnote 78: Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, p. 82.]

While Mary was repairing acts of injustice, Gardiner, with Sir William Petre, was looking into the public accounts. The debts of the late government had been reduced, the currency unconsidered, to L190,000.[79] A doubt had been raised whether, after the attempt to set aside the succession, the queen was bound to take the responsibility of these obligations, but Mary preferred honour to convenience; she promised to pay everything as soon as possible. Further, there remain, partly in Gardiner's hand, a number of hasty notes, written evidently in these same first weeks of Mary's reign, which speak nobly for the intentions with which both Mary and himself were setting generally to work. The expenses of the household were to be reduced to the scale of Henry VII., or the early years of Henry VIII.; the garrisons at Berwick and Calais were to be placed on a more economical footing, the navy reduced, the irregular guard dismissed or diminished. Bribery was to be put an end to in the courts of Westminster, at quarter sessions, and among justices of the peace; "the laws were to be restored to their authority without suffering any matters to be ordered otherwise than as the laws should appoint."[80] These first essentials having been attended to, the famous or infamous book of sales, grants, and exchanges of the crown lands was to be looked into; the impropriation of benefices was to cease, and decency to be restored to the parish churches, where the grooms and gamekeepers should give way to competent ministers; economy, order, justice, and reverence were to heal the canker of profligate profanity which had eaten too long into the moral life of England.

[Footnote 79: August 1553. Debts of the crown. Irish debt, L36,094 18s. Household debts, L14,574 16s. Further household debts, L7450 5s. Berwick debt, with the wages of the officers, L16,639 18s. Calais debt, beside L17,000 of loans and other things, L21,184 10s. Ordnance Office, L3134 7s. Public works, L3200. Admiralty debt, L3923 4s. Debts in the Office of the Chamber, L17,968. Debts beyond the seas by Sir Thomas Gresham's particular bill, L61,068. Alderney's debt, L3028. Scilly debt, L3071.—MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. i. State Paper Office.]

[Footnote 80: Note of things to be attended to: MS. Mary, Domestic, vol. i.]

In happier times Mary might have been a worthy queen, and Gardiner an illustrious minister;[81] but the fatal superstition {p.034} which confounded religion with orthodox opinion was too strong for both of them.

[Footnote 81: Another natural feature of these curious days was the arrest of suspected persons; one of whom, Edward Underhill, the Hot Gospeller, has left behind him, in the account of his own adventures, a very vivid picture of the time. Underhill was a yeoman of the guard. He had seen service in the French wars, but had been noted chiefly for the zeal which he had shown in the late reign in hunting Catholics into gaol. He had thus worked his way into Court favour. During the brief royalty of Jane Grey, his wife was confined. His child was christened at the Tower church, and Suffolk and Pembroke were "gossips," and Jane herself was godmother. The day that Mary was proclaimed, he put out a ballad, which, as he expected, brought him into trouble. "The next day," he is telling his own story, "after the queen was come to the Tower, the foresaid ballad came into the hands of Secretary Bourne, who straightway made inquiry for the said Edward, who dwelt in Lymehurst; which he having intelligence of, sent the sheriff of Middlesex with a company of bills and glaives, who came into my house, being in my bed, and my wife newly laid in childbed. The high constable, whose name is Thomas Joy, dwelled at the house next to me, whom the sheriff brought also with him. He being my very friend, desired the sheriff and his company to stay without for frighting of my wife, and he would go fetch me unto him; who knocked at the door, saying, he must speak with me. I, lying so near that I might hear him, called unto him, willing him to come unto me, for that he was always my very friend and earnest in the gospel, who declared unto me that the sheriff and a great company was sent for me. Whereupon I rose and made me ready to come unto him.

"Sir, said he, I have commandment from the council to apprehend you and bring you unto them.

"Why, said I, it is now ten of the clock at night; you cannot now carry me unto them.

"No, sir, said he, you shall go with me to my house in London, where you shall have a bed, and to-morrow I will bring you unto them in the Tower.

"In the name of God, quoth I, and so went with him, requiring him if I might understand the cause. He said he knew none."

Underhill, however, conjectured that it was the ballad. He "was nothing dismayed;" and in the morning went readily to the Tower, where he waited in the presence chamber talking to the pensioners.

Sir Edward Hastings passed through, and as he saw him, "frowned earnestly." "Are you come?" said Hastings, "we will talk with you ere you part, I warrant you." They were old acquaintances. Underhill had been controller of the ordnance at Calais when Lord Huntingdon was in command there. The earl being in bad health, his brother Sir Edward was with him, assisting in the duties of the office; and Underhill, being able to play and sing, had been a frequent visitor at the Government House. The earl, moreover, "took great delight to hear him reason" with Sir Edward, on points of controversy—chiefly on the real presence—where the controller of the ordnance (according to his own account) would quote Scripture, and Sir Edward would "swear great oaths," "especially by the Lord's foot;" on which Underhill would say, "Nay, then, it must needs be so, and you prove it with such oaths," and the earl would laugh and exclaim, "Brother, give him over, Underhill is too good for you."

Hastings, it seemed, could not forgive these passages of wit, and Underhill was too smart for them. While he stood waiting, Secretary Bourne came in, "looking as the wolf at the lamb," and seeing the man that he had sent for, carried him off into the council room. Hastings was gone, Bedford sat as President, "and Bedford," says Underhill, "was my friend, for that my chance was to be at the recovery of his son, my Lord Russell, when he was cast into the Thames by Lymehurst, whom I received into my house, and gate him to bed, who was in great peril of his life, the weather being very cold."

Bedford, however, made no sign of recognition. Bourne read the ballad; on which Underhill protested that there was no attack on the queen's title in it. No! Bourne said, but it maintains the queen's title with the help of an arrant heretic, Tyndal. Underhill used the word Papist. Sir John Mason asked what he meant by that: "Sir," he says that he replied, "I think, if you look among the priests in Paul's, you shall find some old mumpsimusses there.

"Mumpsimusses, knave, said he, mumpsimusses! Thou art an heretic knave, by God's blood!

"Yea! by the mass, said the Earl of Bath, I warrant him an heretic knave indeed.

"I beseech your honours," Underhill said, "speaking to the Lords that sat at the table (for those others stood by and were not of the council), be my good Lords. I have offended no laws. I have served the Queen's Majesty's father and brother long time, and spent and consumed my living therein. I went not forth against her Majesty, notwithstanding I was commanded."

He was interrupted by Arundel, who said that, "by his writing," "he wished to set them all by the ears." Hastings re-entered at the moment, telling the council that they must repair to the queen, and the Hot Gospeller was promptly ordered to Newgate.

The sheriff led him through the streets, his friend Joy "following afar off, as Peter followed Christ." He wrote a few words to his wife at the door of Newgate, asking her to send him "his nightgown, his Bible, and his lute;" and then entered the prison, his life in which he goes on to describe.

In the centre of Newgate was "a great open hall." "As soon as it was supper time," the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was "Alisander," with his wife, came and sat down, and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony, Underhill "being the first that for religion was sent unto that prison." One of the felons had served with him in France. "After supper," the story continues, "this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured me to have a bed in his chamber, who could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary's guard; yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, for else, he said, he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper's hands and his wife's, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. Well, said Underhill, I have sent for my Bible, and, by God's grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not hide it from them. Sir, said he, I am poor; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well; and I will shew you the nature and manner of them; for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well. Wherefore you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry, and to drink wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can shew you."

The honour of being "white son" to the governor and governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after. Underhill duly provided the desired entertainments. The governor gave him the best room in the prison, with all other admissible indulgences.

"At last," however, "the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many drafts of air," threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted "his lodgings," but to no purpose; the "evil savours" followed him. The keeper offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable. Finally, the wife put him away in her store-closet, amidst her best plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the Earl of Bedford.—Underhill's Narrative: Harleian MSS. 425.]

{p.035} Edward's body was meanwhile examined. The physicians {p.036} reported that without doubt he had died of poison, and there was a thought of indicting the Duke of Northumberland for his murder: but it was relinquished on further inquiry; the poison, if the physicians were right, must have been administered by negligence or accident. The corpse was then buried (August 6) with the forms of the Church of England at Westminster Abbey; the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had so far been left at liberty, read the service; it was the last and saddest function of his public ministry which he was destined to perform. Simultaneously, as Mary had determined, requiems were chanted in the Tower Chapel; and Gardiner, in the presence of the queen and four hundred persons, sung the mass for the dead with much solemnity. The ceremony was, however, injured by a misfortune; after the gospel the incense was carried round, and the chaplain who bore it was married; Doctor Weston, who was afterwards deprived of the deanery of Windsor for adultery, darted forward and snatched the censer out of the chaplain's hand. "Shamest thou not to do thine office," he said, "having a wife, as thou hast? The queen will not be censed by such as thou."[82] Nor was scandal the worst part of it. Elizabeth had been requested to attend, and had refused; angry murmurs and curses against the Bishop of Winchester were heard among the yeomen of the guard; while the queen made no secret of her desire that the example which she had set should be imitated. Renard trembled for the consequences; Noailles anticipated a civil war; twenty thousand men, the latter said, would lose their lives before England would be cured of heresy;[83] yet Mary had made a beginning, and as she had begun she was resolved that others should continue.

[Footnote 82: Strype.]

[Footnote 83: Noailles, vol. ii. p. 111.]

In the Tower she felt her actions under restraint. She was still surrounded by thousands of armed men, the levies of Derby and Hastings, the retainers of Pembroke and Arundel and Bedford; the council were spies upon her actions; the sentinels at the gates were a check upon her visitors. She could receive no one whose business with her was not made public to the lords, and whose reception they were not pleased to sanction; even Renard was for a time excluded from her, and in her anxiety to see him she suggested that he might come to her in disguise.[84] {p.037} Such a thraldom was irksome and inconvenient. She had broken the promise which Renard had been allowed to make for her about religion; she had been troubled, it is easy to believe, with remonstrances, to which she was not likely to have answered with temper; Pembroke absented himself from the presence; he was required to retire and to reduce the number of his followers; the quarrels which began while the queen was at Newhall broke out with worse violence than ever; Lord Derby complained to Renard that those who had saved her crown were treated with neglect, while men like Arundel, Bedford, and Pembroke, who had been parties to the treasons against her, remained in power; Lord Russell was soon after placed under arrest; Pembroke and Winchester were ordered to keep their houses, and the court was distracted with suspicion, discord, and uncertainty.[85]

[Footnote 84: Monseigneur, je n'ay sceu trouver moien jusques a ceste heure de communiquer avec la royne, ce que je deliberois faire avec l'occasion des lectres de sa Majeste, si sans suspicion, j'eusse pen avoir acces, que n'a este possible pour estre les portes en la Tour de Londres ou elle este logee, si gardees que n'est possible y entrer que l'on ne soit congneu; elle m'avoit faict dire si je me pouvoys desguiser et prendre ung manteau, mais il m'a semble pour le mieux et plus seur d'attendre qu'elle soit a Richemont.—Renard to Charles V.: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. pp. 71, 72.]

[Footnote 85: Renard to the Emperor: Rolls House MSS. Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 15.]

From such a scene Mary desired to escape to some place where she could be at least mistress of her own movements; her impatience was quickened by a riot at St. Bartholomew's, where a priest attempted to say mass; and on Saturday, the 12th of August, she removed to Richmond. Her absence encouraged the insubordination of the people. On Sunday, the 13th, another priest was attacked at the altar; the vestments were torn from his back, and the chalice snatched from his hands. Bourne, whom the queen had appointed her chaplain, preached at Paul's Cross. A crowd of refugees and English fanatics had collected round the pulpit; and when he spoke something in praise of Bonner, and said that he had been unjustly imprisoned,[86] yells rose of "Papist, Papist! Tear him down!" A dagger was hurled at the preacher, swords were drawn, the mayor attempted to interfere, but he could not make his way through the dense mass of the rioters; and Bourne would have paid for his rashness with his life had not Courtenay, who was a popular favourite, with his mother, the Marchioness of Exeter, thrown themselves on the pulpit steps, while Bradford sprung to his side, and kept the people back till he could be carried off.

[Footnote 86: Renard says it was at these words that the exasperation broke out.]

But the danger did not end there. The Protestant orators sounded the alarm through London. Meetings were held, and inflammatory placards were scattered about the streets. If {p.038} religion was to be tampered with, men were heard to say, it was better at once to fetch Northumberland from the Tower.

Uncertain on whom she could rely, Mary sent for Renard (August 16), who could only repeat his former cautions, and appeal to what had occurred in justification of them. He undertook to pacify Lord Derby; but in the necessity to which she was so soon reduced of appealing to him, a foreigner, in her emergencies, he made her feel that she could not carry things with so high a hand. She had a rival in the Queen of Scots, beyond her domestic enemies, whom her wisdom ought to fear; she would ruin herself if she flew in the face of her subjects; and he prevailed so far with her that she promised to take no further steps till the meeting of parliament. After a consultation with the mayor, she drew up a hasty proclamation, granting universal toleration till further orders, forbidding her Protestant and Catholic subjects to interrupt each other's services, and prohibiting at the same time all preaching on either side without licence from herself.

Being on the spot, the ambassador took the opportunity of again trying Mary's disposition upon the marriage question. His hopes had waned since her arrival in London; he had spoken to Paget, who agreed that an alliance with the Prince of Spain was the most splendid which the queen could hope for; but the time was inopportune, and the people were intensely hostile. The exigencies of the position, he thought, might oblige the queen to yield to wishes which she could not oppose, and accept Lord Courtenay; or possibly her own inclination might set in the same direction; or, again, she might wish to renew her early engagement with the emperor himself. The same uncertainty had been felt at Brussels; the Bishop of Arras, therefore, had charged Renard to feel his way carefully and make no blunder. If the queen inclined to the emperor, he might speak of Philip as more eligible; if she fancied Courtenay, it would be useless to interfere—she would only resent his opposition.[87] Renard obeyed his instructions, and the result was reassuring. When the ambassador mentioned the word "marriage," the queen began to smile significantly, not once, but many times; she plainly liked the topic: plainly, also, her thoughts were not turning in the direction of any English husband; she spoke of her rank, and of her unwillingness to {p.039} condescend to a subject; Courtenay, the sole remaining representative of the White Rose except the Poles, was the only Englishman who could in any way be thought suitable for her; but she said that she expected the emperor to provide a consort for her, and that, being a woman, she could not make the first advances. Renard satisfied himself from her manner that, if the Prince of Spain was proposed, the offer would be most entirely welcome.[88]

[Footnote 87: Car si elle y avoit fantasie, elle ne laisseroit, si elle este du naturel des autres femmes, de passer oultre, et si se ressentiroit a jamais de ce que vous en pourriez avoir dit.—Arras to Renard: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 77.]

[Footnote 88: Renard to the Bishop of Arras: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 79. Renard to Charles V., August 16: Rolls House MSS.]

The trials of the conspirators were now resolved upon. The queen was determined to spare Lady Jane Grey, in spite of all which Renard could urge; but the state of London showed that the punishment of the really guilty could no longer be safely delayed. On this point all parties in the council were agreed. On Friday, the 18th of August, therefore, a court of peers was formed in Westminster Hall, with the aged Duke of Norfolk for High Steward, to try John Dudley Duke of Northumberland, the Earl of Warwick, and the Marquis of Northampton for high treason. Forty-four years before, as the curious remarked, the father of Norfolk had sat on the commission which tried the father of Northumberland for the same crime.

The indictments charged the prisoners with levying war against their lawful sovereign. Northumberland, who was called first to the bar, pleaded guilty of the acts which were laid against him, but he submitted two points to the consideration of the court.

1. Whether, having taken the field with a warrant under the Great Seal, he could be lawfully accused of treason.

2. Whether those peers from whom he had received his commission, and by whose letters he had been directed in what he had done, could sit upon his trial as his judges.

The Great Seal, he was answered briefly, was the seal of a usurper, and could convey no warrant to him. If the lords were as guilty as he said, yet, "so long as no attainder was on record against them, they were persons able in law to pass upon any trial, and not to be challenged but at the prince's pleasure."[89]

[Footnote 89: Queen Jane and Queen Mary. The anomaly in the constitution of the Court amused Renard, who commented upon it to the Emperor, as an illustration of England and the English character.—Rolls House MSS.]

The duke bowed and was silent.

Northampton and Warwick came next, and, like Northumberland, confessed to the indictment. Northampton, however, pleaded in his defence, that he had held no public office {p.040} during the crisis; that he had not been present at the making of Edward's device, and had been amusing himself hunting in the country.[90] Warwick, with proud sadness, said merely, that he had followed his father, and would share his father's fortunes; if his property was confiscated, he hoped that his debts would be paid.[91]

[Footnote 90: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. Queen Jane and Queen Mary, Appendix. Baoardo says, Northampton pleaded—Ch' egli non si era mai messo in governo et che sempre attese alla caccia.]

[Footnote 91: Ibid.]

But Northampton had indisputably been in the field with the army, and, as his judges perfectly well knew, had been, with Suffolk, the Duke's uniform supporter in his most extreme measures; the queen had resolved to pardon him; but the court could not recognise his excuse. Norfolk rose, in a few words pronounced the usual sentence, and broke his wand; the cold glimmering edge of the Tower axe was turned towards the prisoners, and the peers rose. Northumberland, before he was led away, fell upon his knees; his children were young, he said, and had acted under orders from himself; to them let the queen show mercy; for himself he had his peace to make with Heaven; he entreated for a few days of life, and the assistance of a confessor; if two of the council would come to confer with him, he had important secrets of state to communicate; and, finally, he begged that he might die by the axe like a nobleman.[92]

[Footnote 92: Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p 17, Renard says that he asked the council to intercede for his life.]

On the 19th, Sir John and Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley, and Sir Thomas Palmer were tried before a special commission. Dudley had gone with the treasonable message to France; the three others were the boldest and most unscrupulous of the Duke's partisans, while Palmer was also especially hated for his share in the death of Somerset. These four also pleaded guilty, and were sentenced, Palmer only scornfully telling the commissioners that they were traitors as well as he, and worse than he.[93]

[Footnote 93: So Renard states. The author of the Chronicle of Queen Mary says merely that he denied that he had borne arms against the queen, but admitted that he had been with the army.]

Seven had been condemned; three only, the duke, Sir John Gates, and Palmer, were to suffer.

Crime alone makes death terrible: in the long list of victims whose bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the sixteenth century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice, and one of those was a soldier and a nobleman, who, {p.041} in a moment of extreme peril, four years before, had kissed swords with his comrades, and had sworn to conquer the insurgents at Norwich, or die with honour.

The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion. He had affected religion, talked about religion, played with religion, till fools and flatterers had told him that he was a saint; and now, in his extreme need, he found that he had trifled with forms and words, till they had grown into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of death was opening at his feet, and he had no faith, no hope, no conviction, but only a blank and awful horror, and perhaps he felt that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself back in agony into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak with some member of the council; he had asked for a confessor. In Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, he found both.

After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured out his miserable story; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had been a Catholic; he had believed nothing of all the doctrines for which he had pretended to be so zealous under Edward. "Alas!" he cried, "is there no help for me?" "Let me live but a little longer to do penance for my many sins." Gardiner's heart was softened at the humiliating spectacle; he would speak to the queen, he said, and he did speak, not wholly without success; he may have judged rightly, that the living penitence of the Joshua of the Protestants would have been more useful to the church than his death.[94] Already Mary had expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man should be spared; and he would have been allowed to live, except for the reiterated protests of Renard in his own name and in the emperor's.

[Footnote 94: The authority for this story is Parsons the Jesuit, who learnt it from one of the council who was present at the interview. Parsons says, indeed, that Mary would have spared the duke; but that some one wrote to the emperor, and that the emperor insisted that he should be put to death. This could not be, because there was no time for letters to pass and repass between Brussels and London, in the interval between the sentence and the execution; but Renard says distinctly that Mary did desire to pardon him, and that he was himself obliged to exert his influence to prevent it.]

It was decided at last that he should die; and a priest was assigned him to prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom Cranmer long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of Palmer and the rest—to them, {p.042} as rough soldiers, spiritual consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.

The executions were fixed originally for Monday, the 21st; but the duke's conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important not to be dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick, Andrew Dudley, or Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be respited, and, as all alike availed themselves of the services of a confessor and the forms of the Catholic faith, their compliance could be made an instrument of a public and edifying lesson. The lives of those who were to suffer were prolonged for twenty-four hours. On Monday morning "certain of the citizens of London" were requested to be in attendance at the Tower chapel, where Northumberland, Northampton, Dudley, Henry Gates, and Palmer were brought in; and, "first kneeling down, every one of them, upon his knees, they heard mass, saying devoutedly, with the bishop,[95] every one of them, Confiteor."

[Footnote 95: Gardiner.]

"After the mass was done, the duke rose up, and looked back upon my lord marquis, and came unto him, asking them all forgiveness, the one after the other, upon their knees, one to another; and the one did heartily forgive the other. And then they came, every one of them, before the altar, every one of them kneeling, and confessing to the bishop that they were the same men in the faith according as they had confessed to him before, and that they all would die in the Catholic faith." When they had all received the sacrament, they rose and turned to the people, and the duke said:—

"Truly, good people, I profess here before you all, that I have received the sacrament according to the true Catholic faith: and the plague that is upon the realm and upon us now is that we have erred from the faith these sixteen years; and this I protest unto you all from the bottom of my heart."

Northampton, with the rest, "did affirm the same with weeping tears."[96]

[Footnote 96: Harleian MSS. 284. Compare the account of the chronicler, Queen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 18, 19.]

Among the spectators were observed the sons of the Duke of Somerset.

In exhibiting to the world the humiliation of the professors of the gospel, the Catholic party enjoyed a pardonable triumph. Northumberland, in playing a part in the pageant, was hoping to save his wretched life. When it was over he wrote (August 22) a passionate appeal to Arundel.

{p.043} "Alas, my lord," he said, "is my crime so heinous as no redemption but my blood can wash away the spots thereof? An old proverb there is, and that most true—A living dog is better than a dead lion; oh that it would please her good grace to give me life, yea, the life of a dog, if I might but live and kiss her feet, and spend both life and all in her honourable service."

But Arundel could not save him—would not have saved him, perhaps, had he been able—and he had only to face the end with such resolution as he could command.

The next morning, at nine o'clock, Warwick and Sir John Gates heard mass in the Tower chapel; the two Seymours were again present with Courtenay: and before Gates received the sacrament, he said a few words of regret to the latter for his long imprisonment, of which he admitted himself in part the cause.[97] On leaving the chapel Warwick was taken back to his room, and learned that he was respited. Gates joined Palmer, who was walking with Watson in the garden, and talking with the groups of gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately after, the duke was brought out. "Sir John," he said to Gates, "God have mercy on us; forgive me as I forgive you, although you and your council have brought us hither." "I forgive you, my lord," Gates answered, "as I would be forgiven; yet it was you and your authority that was the only original cause of all." They bowed each. The duke passed on, and the procession moved forward to Tower Hill.

[Footnote 97: "Not for any hatred towards you," he added, "but for fear that harm might come thereby to my late young master."—Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 20.]

The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment; but the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an artificial importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his life, or whether, divided between atheism and superstition, he thought, if any religion was true, Romanism was true, and it was prudent not to throw away a chance, who can tell? At all events, he mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop of Worcester, at his side; and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his rebellion and his present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led him to err from the Catholic faith of Christ; the fathers and the saints had ever agreed in one doctrine; the present generation were the first that had dared to follow their private opinions; and in England and in Germany, where error had taken deepest root, there had followed war, famine, rebellion, misery, tokens {p.044} all of them of God's displeasure. Therefore, as they loved their country, as they valued their souls, he implored his hearers to turn, all of them, and turn at once, to the church which they had left; in which church he, from the bottom of his heart, avowed his own steadfast belief. For himself he called them all to witness that he died in the one true Catholic faith; to which, if he had been brought sooner, he would not have been in his present calamity.

He then knelt; "I beseech you all," he said again, "to believe that I die in the Catholic faith." He repeated the Miserere psalm, the psalm De Profundis, and the Paternoster. The executioner, as usual, begged his pardon. "I have deserved a thousand deaths," he muttered. He made the sign of the cross upon the saw-dust, and kissed it, then laid down his head, and perished.

The shame of the apostasy shook down the frail edifice of the Protestant constitution, to be raised again in suffering, as the first foundations of it had been laid, by purer hands and nobler spirits.[98] In his better years Northumberland had been a faithful subject and a fearless soldier, and, with a master's hand over him, he might have lived with integrity, and died with honour. Opportunity tempted his ambition—ambition betrayed him {p.045} into crime—and, given over to his lower nature, he climbed to the highest round of the political ladder, to fall and perish like a craven. He was one of those many men who can follow worthily, yet cannot lead; and the virtue of the beginning was not less real than the ignominy of the end.

[Footnote 98: Lady Jane Grey spoke a few memorable words on the duke's conduct at the scaffold. "On Tuesday, the 29th of August," says the writer of the Chronicle of Queen Mary, "I dined at Partridge's house (in the Tower) with my Lady Jane, she sitting at the board's-end, Partridge, his wife, and my lady's gentlewoman. We fell in discourse of religion. I pray you, quoth she, have they mass in London. Yea, forsooth, quoth I, in some places. It may so be, quoth she. It is not so strange as the sudden conversion of the late duke; for who could have thought, said she, he would have so done? It was answered her, perchance he thereby hoped to have had his pardon. Pardon! quoth she, woe worth him! He hath brought me and our stock in most miserable calamity by his exceeding ambition; but for the answering that he hoped for life by his turning, though other men be of that opinion, I utterly am not. For what man is there living, I pray you, although he had been innocent, that would hope of life in that case, being in the field in person against the queen, as general, and after his taking so hated and evil spoken of by the Commons; and at his coming into prison, so wondered at as the like was never heard by any man's time. Who can judge that he should hope for pardon whose life was odious to all men? But what will ye more? Like as his life was wicked and full of dissimulation, so was his end thereafter. I pray God I view no friend of mine die so. Should I, who am young and in my few years, forsake my faith for the love of life? Nay, God forbid! Much more he should not, whose fatal course, although he had lived his just number of years, could not have long continued. But life was sweet, it appeared. So he might have lived, you will say, he did not care how; indeed the reason is good; for he that would have lived in chains to have had his life, by like would leave no other means unattempted. But God be merciful to us, for he saith, whoso denyeth him before men, he will not know him in his Father's kingdom."—Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 24.]

Gates was the second sufferer. He, too, spoke in the same key. He had been a great reader of Scripture, he said, but he had not read it to be edified, but to be seditious—to dispute, to interpret it after his private affection; to him, therefore, the honey had been poison, and he warned all men how they followed his ill example; God's holy mysteries were no safe things to toy or play with. Gates, in dying, had three strokes of an axe;—"Whether," says an eye-witness,[99] "it was by his own request or no was doubtful"—remarkable words: as if the everlasting fate of the soul depended on its latest emotion, and repentance could be intensified by the conscious realisation of death.

[Footnote 99: Harleian MSS. 284.]

Last came Sir Thomas Palmer, in whom, to judge by his method of taking leave of life, there was some kind of nobleness. It was he who led the cavalry forlorn hope, at Haddington, when the supplies were thrown in for the garrison.

He leapt upon the scaffold, red with the blood of his companions. "Good morning to you all, good people," he said, looking round him with a smile; "ye come hither to see me die, and to see what news I have; marry, I will tell you; I have seen more in yonder terrible place [he pointed towards the Tower] than ever I saw before throughout all the realms that ever I wandered in; for there I have seen God, I have seen the world, and I have seen myself; and when I beheld my life, I saw nothing but slime and clay, full of corruption; I saw the world nothing else but vanity, and all the pleasures and treasures thereof nought worth; I saw God omnipotent, his power infinite, his mercy incomprehensible; and when I saw this, I most humbly submitted myself unto him, beseeching him of mercy and pardon, and I trust he hath forgiven me; for he called me once or twice before, but I would not turn to him, but even now by this sharp kind of death he hath called me unto him. I trust the wings of his mercy shall spread over me and save me; and I do here confess, before you all, Christ to be the very Son of God the Father, born of the Virgin Mary, which came into the world to fulfil the law for us, and to bear our offences on his back, and suffered his passion for our redemption, by the which I trust to be saved."

{p.046} Like his fellow-sufferers, Palmer then said a few prayers, asked the queen's forgiveness, knelt, and died.

Stunned by the apostasy on the scaffold of the man whom they had worshipped as a prophet, the ultra-faction among the Protestants became now powerless. The central multitude, whose belief was undefined, yielded to the apparent sentence of Heaven upon a cause weakened by unsuccessful treason, and disavowed in his death by its champion. Edward had died on the anniversary of the execution of More; God, men said, had visited his people, and "the Virgin Mary" had been set upon the throne for their redemption.[100] Dr. Watson, on the 20th of August, preached at Paul's Cross under a guard of soldiers; on the 24th, two days after the scene on Tower Hill, so little was a guard necessary, that mass was said in St. Paul's Church in Latin, with matins and vespers. The crucifix was replaced in the roodloft, the high altar was re-decorated, the real presence was defended from the pulpit, and, except from the refugees, not a murmur was heard.[101] Catching this favourable opportunity, the queen charmed the country with the announcement that the second portion of the last subsidy granted by Parliament should not be collected; she gave her word that the currency at the earliest moment should be thoroughly restored; while she gained credit on all sides for the very moderate vengeance with which she appeared to be contenting herself. Ridley only, Renard wrote, on the 9th of September, would now be executed; the other prisoners were to be all pardoned. The enthusiasm was slightly abated, indeed, when it was announced that their forgiveness would not be wholly free. Montague and Bromley, on their release from the Tower, were fined L7000 a-piece; Suffolk, Northampton, and other noblemen and gentlemen, as their estates would bear. But, to relieve the burdens of the people at the expense of those who had reaped the harvest of the late spoliations was, on the whole, a legitimate retribution; the moneyed men were pleased with the recognition of Edward's debts, and provided a loan of 25,000 crowns for the present necessities of the government. London streets rang again with shouts of "God Save the Queen;" and Mary recovered a fresh instalment of popularity to carry her a few steps further.[102]

[Footnote 100: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 101: Ibid.]

[Footnote 102: Noailles; Renard.]

The refugees were the first difficulty. They were too numerous to imprison; and the most influential among them—men like Peter Martyr—having come to England on the invitation {p.047} of the late government, it was neither just nor honourable to hand them over to their own sovereigns. But both Mary and her Flemish adviser were anxious to see them leave the country as quickly as possible. The emperor recommended a general intimation to be given out, that criminals of all kinds taking refuge in England would be liable to seizure, offences against religion being neither specially mentioned nor specially excepted.[103] The foreign preachers were ordered to depart by proclamation; and Peter Martyr, who had left Oxford, and was staying with Cranmer at Lambeth, expecting an arrest, received, instead of it, a safe-conduct, of which he instantly availed himself. The movements of others were quickened with indirect menaces; while Gardiner told Renard, with much self-satisfaction, that a few messages desiring some of them to call upon him at his house had given them wings.[104]

[Footnote 103: Renard to Queen Mary: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv. p. 65.]

[Footnote 104: Renard to Charles V., September 9: Rolls House MSS.]

Finding her measures no longer opposed, the queen refused next to recognise the legality of the marriage of the clergy. Married priests should either leave their wives or leave their benefices; and on the 29th of August, Gardiner, Bonner, Day, and Tunstal, late prisoners in the Tower, were appointed commissioners to examine into the conditions of their episcopal brethren. Convocation was about to meet, and must undergo a preliminary purification. Unhappy Convocation! So lately the supreme legislative body in the country, it was now patched, clipped, mended, repaired, or altered, as the secular government put on its alternate hues. The Protestant bishops had accepted their offices on Protestant terms—Quamdiu se bene gesserint, on their good behaviour; and, with the assistance of so pliant a clause, a swift clearance was effected. Barlow, to avoid expulsion, resigned Bath. Paul Bush retreated from Bristol. Hooper, ejected from Worcester by the restoration of Heath, was deprived of Gloucester for heresy and marriage, and, being a dangerous person, was committed on the 1st of September to the Fleet. Ferrars, of St. David's, left in prison by Northumberland for other pretended offences, was deprived on the same grounds, but remained in confinement. Bird, having a wife, was turned out of Chester; Archbishop Holgate out of York. Coverdale, Ridley, Scory, and Ponet had been already disposed of. The bench was wholesomely swept.[105]

[Footnote 105: Some of the Protestant bishops (Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley, and Ferrars were admirable exceptions) had taken care of themselves in the seven years of plenty. At the time of the deposition of the Archbishop of York an inventory was taken of the personal property which was then in his possession. He had five houses, three very well provided, two meetly well. At his house at Battersea he had, of coined gold, L300; plate gilt and parcel gilt, 1600 oz. Mitre, gold, with two pendants set with very fine diamonds, sapphires, and balists, and other stones and pearls, weight 125 oz.; six great gold rings, with very fine sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, turquoises. "At Cawood he had of money L900; mitres, 2. Plate gilt and parcel gilt, 770 oz; broken cross of silver gilt, 46 oz.; two thousand five hundred sheep; two Turkey carpets, as big and as good as any subject had; a chest full of copes and vestments. Household stores: wheat, 200 quarters; malt, 500 quarters; oats, 60 quarters; wine, five or six tuns; fish and ling, six or seven hundred; horses at Cawood, four or five score; harness and artillery sufficient for seven score men."—Strype's Crammer, vol. i. p. 440.]

{p.048} The English Protestant preachers seeing that priests everywhere held themselves licensed ex officio to speak as they pleased from the pulpit, began themselves also, in many places, to disobey the queen's proclamation. They were made immediately to feel their mistake, and were brought to London to the Tower, the Marshalsea, or the Fleet, to the cells left vacant by their opponents. Among the rest came one who had borne no share in the late misdoings, but had long foreseen the fate to which those doings would bring him and many more. When Latimer was sent for, he was at Stamford. On the 4th of September six hours' notice was given him of his intended arrest; and so obviously his escape was desired, that the pursuivant who brought the warrant left him to obey it at his leisure; his orders, he said, were not to wait. But Latimer had business in England. While the fanatics who had provoked the catastrophe were slinking across the Channel from its consequences, Latimer determined to stay at home, and help to pay the debts which they had incurred. He went quietly to London, appeared before the council, where his "demeanour" was what they were pleased to term "seditious,"[106] and was committed to the Tower. "What, my friend," he said to a warder who was an old acquaintance there, "how do you? I am come to be your neighbour again." Sir Thomas Palmer's rooms in the garden were assigned for his lodging. In the winter he was left without a fire, and, growing infirm, he sent a message to the Lieutenant of the Tower to look better after him, or he should give him the slip yet.[107]

[Footnote 106: Privy Council Register, MS. Mary.]

[Footnote 107: Foxe.]

And there was another besides Latimer who would not fly when the chance was left open to him. Archbishop Cranmer had continued at Lambeth unmolested, yet unpardoned; his conduct with respect to the letters patent had been more upright than the conduct of any other member of the council by {p.049} whom they had been signed; and on this ground, therefore, an exception could not easily be made in his disfavour. But his friends had interceded vainly to obtain the queen's definite forgiveness for him; treason might be forgotten; the divorce of Catherine of Arragon could never be forgotten. So he waited on, watching the reaction gathering strength, and knowing well the point to which it tended. In the country the English service was set aside and the mass restored with but little disturbance. No force had been used or needed; the Catholic majorities among the parishioners had made the change for themselves. The archbishop's friends came to him for advice; he recommended them to go abroad; he was urged to go himself while there was time; he said, "it would be in no ways fitting for him to go away, considering the post in which he was; and to show that he was not afraid to own all the changes that were by his means made in religion in the last reign."[108]

[Footnote 108: Strype's Cranmer.]

Neither was it fitting for him to sit by in silence. The world, misconstruing his inaction, believed him false like Northumberland; the world reported that he had restored mass at Canterbury; the world professed to have ascertained that he had offered to sing a requiem at Edward's funeral. In the second week of September, therefore, he made a public offer, in the form of a letter to a friend, to defend the communion service, and all the alterations for which he was responsible, against any one who desired to impugn them; he answered the stories against himself with a calm denial; and, though the letter was not printed, copies in manuscript were circulated through London so numerously that the press, said Renard, would not have sent out more.[109]

[Footnote 109: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS. In these late times, when men whose temper has not been tried by danger, feel themselves entitled, nevertheless, by their own innocence of large errors, to sit in judgment on the greatest of their forefathers, Cranmer has received no tender treatment. Because, in the near prospect of a death of agony, his heart for a moment failed him, the passing weakness has been accepted as the key to his life, and he has been railed at as a coward and a sycophant. Considering the position of the writer, and the circumstances under which it was issued, I regard the publication of this letter as one of the bravest actions ever deliberately ventured by man.

Let it be read, and speak for itself.

"As the devil, Christ's antient adversary, is a liar and the father of lying, even so hath he stirred his servants and members to persecute Christ and his true word and religion, which he ceaseth not to do most earnestly at this present. For whereas the most noble prince, of famous memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses of the Latin masses, reformed some things therein in his time, and also our late sovereign lord King Edward VI. took the same wholly away, for the manifold errours and abuses thereof, and restored in the place thereof Christ's holy supper, according to Christ's own institution, and as the Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in the beginning, the devil goeth about by lying to overthrow the Lord's holy supper, and to restore the Latin satisfactory masses, a thing of his own invention and device. And to bring the same more clearly to pass, some have abused the name of me, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad that I have set up the mass at Canterbury, and that I offered to say mass before the Queen's Highness at Paul's Cross and I wot not where. I have been well exercised these twenty years, to suffer and to bear evil reports and lies, and have not been much grieved thereat, and have borne all things quietly; yet where untrue reports and lies turn to the hindrance of God's truth, they be in no ways to be tolerated and suffered. Wherefore these be to signify to the world that it was not I that did set up the mass at Canterbury, but a false, flattering, lying, and dissembling monk, which caused the mass to be set up there without my advice and counsel: and as for offering myself to say mass before the Queen's Highness, or in any other place, I never did, as her Grace knoweth well. But if her Grace will give me leave, I shall be ready to prove against all that will say the contrary, that the Communion-book, set forth by the most innocent and godly prince King Edward VI., in his High Court of Parliament, is conformable to the order which our Saviour Christ did both observe and command to be observed, which his Apostles and primitive Church used many years; whereas the mass in many things not only hath no foundation of Christ, his Apostles, nor the primitive Church, but also is contrary to the same, and containeth many horrible blasphemies."]

{p.050} The challenge was answered by an immediate summons before the council; the archbishop was accused of attempting to excite sedition among the people, and was forthwith committed to the Tower to wait, with Ridley and Latimer, there, till his fate should be decided on. Meantime the eagerness with which the country generally availed itself of the permission to restore the Catholic ritual, proved beyond a doubt that, except in London and a few large towns, the popular feeling was with the queen. The English people had no affection for the Papacy. They did not wish for the re-establishment of the religious orders, or the odious domination of the clergy. But the numerical majority among them did desire a celibate priesthood, the ceremonies which the customs of centuries had sanctified, and the ancient faith of their fathers, as reformed by Henry VIII. The rights of conscience had found no more consideration from the Protestant doctrinalists than from the most bigoted of the persecuting prelates; and the facility with which the professors of the gospel had yielded to moral temptations, had for the time inspired moderate men with much distrust for them and for their opinions.

Could Mary have been contented to pursue her victory no further, she would have preserved the hearts of her subjects; and the reaction, left to complete its own tendencies, would in {p.051} a few years, perhaps, have accomplished in some measure her larger desires. But few sovereigns have understood less the effects of time and forbearance. She was deceived by the rapidity of her first success; she flattered herself that, difficult though it might be, she could build up again the ruined hierarchy, could compel the holders of church property to open their hands, and could reunite the country to Rome. Before she had been three weeks on the throne, she had received, as will be presently mentioned, a secret messenger from the Vatican; and she had opened a correspondence with the pope, entreating him, as an act of justice to herself and to those who had remained true to their Catholic allegiance, to remove the interdict.[110]

[Footnote 110: Renard to Charles V., September 9: Rolls House MSS.]

Other actors in the great drama which was approaching were already commencing their parts.

Reginald Pole having attempted in vain to recover a footing in England on the accession of Edward, having seen his passionate expectations from the Council of Trent melt into vapour, and Germany confirmed in heresy by the Peace of Passau, was engaged, in the summer of 1553, at a convent on the Lago di Garda, in re-editing his book against Henry VIII., with an intended dedication to Edward, of whose illness he was ignorant. The first edition, on the failure of his attempt to raise a Catholic crusade against his country, had been withdrawn from circulation; the world had not received it favourably, and there was a mystery about the publication which it is difficult to unravel. In the interval between the first despatch of the book into England as a private letter in the summer of 1536, and the appearance of it in print at Rome in the winter of 1538-9, it was re-written, as I have already stated, enlarged, and divided into parts. In a letter of apology which Pole wrote to Charles V., in the summer or early autumn of 1538,[111] he spoke of that division as having been executed by himself;[112] he said that he had kept his book secret till the church had spoken; but Paul having excommunicated Henry, he could no longer remain silent; he dwelt at length on the history of the work which he was then editing,[113] and he sent a copy at the same time with a letter, or he {p.052} wrote a letter with the intention of sending a copy, to James V. of Scotland.[114]

[Footnote 111: Before his embassy to Spain.]

[Footnote 112: Opus in quatuor libros sum partitus.]

[Footnote 113: "Scripta quae nunc edo," are his own words in the apology, and therefore, in an earlier part of this work, I said that he published his book himself. There is no doubt, from the context, that in the word scripta he referred to that book and to no other.]

[Footnote 114: "Eum ad te librum Catholice princeps nunc mitto, et sub nominis tui auspiciis cujus te strenuum pietatis ministrum praebes in lucem exire volo."—Epistola ad Regem Scotiae: Poli Epistolae, vol. i. p. 174.]

But Charles had refused to move; the book injured Henry not at all, and injured fatally those who were dear to Pole; he checked the circulation of the copies, and he declared to the Cardinal of Naples that it had been published only at the command of the pope—that his own anxiety had been for the suppression of it.[115] Thirteen years after this, however, writing to Edward VI., he forgot that he had described himself to Charles as being himself engaged in the publication; and he assured the young king that he had never thought of publishing the book, that he had abhorred the very thought of publishing it; that it was prepared, edited, and printed by his friends at Rome during his own absence;[116] now, at length, he found himself obliged in his own person to give it forth, because an edition was in preparation elsewhere from one of the earlier copies; and he selected the son of Henry as the person to whom he could most becomingly dedicate the libel against his father's memory.

[Footnote 115: "Qui si postea editus fuit magis id aliorum voluntate et illius qui mihi imperare potuit quam mea est factum, mea vero fuit ut impressus supprimeretur."—Ibid. vol. iv. p. 85.]

[Footnote 116: "Nam cum ad urbem ex Hispania rediens libros injussu meo typis excusos reperissem, toto volumine amicorum studio et opera non sine ejus auctoritate qui jus imperandi haberet in plures libros disposito quod ego non feceram quippe qui de ejus editione nunquam cogitassem," etc.

"Quid aliud hoc significavit nisi me ab his libris divulgandis penitus abhorruisse ut certe abhorrui."—Epistola ad Edwardum Sextum: Poli Epistolae. The book being the sole authority for some of the darkest charges against Henry VIII., the history of it is of some importance.

This was not the only instance in which his recollection of his own conduct was something treacherous. In the apology to Charles V., speaking of a war against Henry, he had said: "Tempus venisse video, ad te primum missus, deinde ad Regem Christianissimum, ut hujus scelera per se quidem minime obscura detegam, et te Caesar a bello Turcico abducere coner et quantum possum suadeam ut arma tua eo convertas si huic tanto malo aliter mederi non possis." For thus, "levying war against his country," Pole had been attainted. The name of traitor grated upon him. To Edward, therefore, he wrote: "I invited the two sovereigns rather to win back the king, by the ways of love and affection, as a fallen friend and brother, than to assail him with arms as an enemy. This I never desired nor did I urge any such conduct upon them. Hoc ego nunquam profecto volui neque cum illis egi."—Epistola ad Edwardum Sextum; Ibid.]

Edward did not live to receive this evidence of Pole's good feeling. He died before the edition was completed; and as soon as Northumberland's failure and Mary's accession were known at Rome, England was looked upon in the Consistory {p.053} as already recovered to the faith, and Pole was chosen by the unanimous consent of the cardinals as the instrument of the reconciliation. The account of the proclamation of the queen was brought to the Vatican on the 6th of August by a courier from Paris; the pope in tears of joy drew his commission and despatched it on the instant to the Lago di Garda; and on the 9th Pole himself wrote to Mary to say that he had been named legate, and waited her orders to fly to England. He still clung to his conviction that the revolution in all its parts had been the work of a small faction, and that he had but himself to set his foot upon the shore to be received with an ovation; his impulse was therefore to set out without delay; but the recollection, among other things, that he was attainted by act of parliament, forced him to delay unwillingly till he received formal permission to present himself.

Anxious for authentic information as to the state of England and the queen's disposition, Julius had before despatched also a secret agent, Commendone, afterwards a cardinal, with instructions to make his way to London to communicate with Mary, and if possible to learn her intentions from her own lips. Rapid movement was possible in Europe even with the roads of the sixteenth century. Commendone was probably sent from Rome as soon as Edward was known to be dead; he was in London, at all events, on the 8th of August,[117] disguised as an Italian gentleman in search of property which he professed had been bequeathed him by a kinsman. By the favour of Providence,[118] he fell in with an acquaintance, a returned Catholic refugee, who had a place in the household; and from this man he learnt that the queen was virtually a prisoner in the Tower, and that the heretics on the council allowed no one of whose business they disapproved to have access to her. Mary, however, was made acquainted with his arrival; a secret interview was managed, at which she promised to do her very best in the interests of the church; but she had still, she said, to conquer her kingdom, and Pole's coming, much as she desired it, was for the moment out of the question; before she could draw the spiritual sword she must have the temporal sword more firmly in her grasp, and she looked to marriage as the best means of strengthening herself. If she married abroad, she thought at that time of the emperor; if she accepted one of her subjects, {p.054} she doubted—in her dislike of Courtenay—whether Pole might not return in a less odious capacity than that of Apostolic Legate; as the queen's intended husband the country might receive him; he had not yet been ordained priest, and deacon's orders, on a sufficient occasion, could perhaps be dispensed with.[119] The visit, or visits, were concealed even from Renard. Commendone was forbidden, under the strictest injunctions, to reveal what the queen might say to him, except to the pope or to Pole; and it is the more likely that she was serious in her expressions about the latter, from the care with which she left Renard in ignorance of Commendone's presence.

[Footnote 117: He remained fifteen days, and he left for Rome the day after the execution of Northumberland.—Pallavicino.]

[Footnote 118: Caelitum ductu.]

[Footnote 119: "Nec destiterat regina id ipsum Commendono indicare, eum percontata an existimaret Pontificem ad id legem Polo relaxaturum, cum is nondum sacerdos sed diaconus esset, extarentque hujusmodi relaxionum exempla ingentis alicujus emolumenti gratia."—Pallavicino.]

The papal messenger remained long enough to witness a rapid change in her position; he saw the restoration of the mass; he was in London at the execution, and he learnt the apostasy, of Northumberland; and he carried letters from Mary to the pope with assurances of fidelity, and entreaties for the absolution of the kingdom. But Mary was obliged to say, notwithstanding, that for the present she was in the power of the people, of whom the majority mortally detested the Holy See; that the lords of the council were in possession of vast estates which had been alienated from the church, and they feared their titles might be called in question;[120] and, although she agreed herself in all which Pole had urged (she had received his letter before Commendone left England), yet that, nevertheless, necessity acknowledged no law. Her heretical sister was in every one's mouth, and might at any moment take her place on the throne, and for the present, she said, to her deep regret, she could not, with prudence or safety, allow the legate to come to her.

[Footnote 120: Mary described her throne as, "acquistato per benevolenze di quei popoli, che per la maggior parte odiano a morte questa sancta sede, oltre gl' interessi dei beni ecclesiastici occupati da molti signori, che sono del suo consiglio."—Julius III. to Pole: Poli Epistolae, vol. iv.]

The queen's letters were confirmed by Commendone himself; he had been permitted to confer in private with more than one good Catholic in the realm; and every one had given him the same assurances,[121] although he had urged upon them the opposite opinion entertained by Pole:[122] he had himself witnessed the {p.055} disposition with which the people regarded Elizabeth, and he was satisfied that the queen's alarm on this head was not exaggerated.[123]

[Footnote 121: "Le parole che haveva inteso da lei disse di haver inteso da persone Catholice et digne di fede in quel paese."—Ibid.]

[Footnote 122: "Et similmente espose l' opinione vostra con le ragioni che vi movano."—Ibid.]

[Footnote 123: Julius III. to Pole: Poli Epistolae, vol. iv.]

In opinions so emphatically given, the pope was obliged to acquiesce, and the same view was enforced upon him equally strongly by the emperor. Charles knew England tolerably well; he was acquainted perfectly well with the moral and intellectual unfitness of the intended legate for any office which required discretion; and Julius, therefore, was obliged to communicate to the eager cardinal the necessity of delay, and to express his fear that, by excess of zeal, he might injure the cause and alienate the well-affected queen.[124] Though Pole might not go to England, however, he might go, as he went before, to the immediate neighbourhood; he might repair to Flanders, with a nominal commission to mediate in the peace which was still hoped for. In Flanders, though the pope forbore to tell him so, he would be under the emperor's eyes and under the emperor's control, till the vital question of the queen's marriage had been disposed of, or till England was in a calmer humour.

[Footnote 124: "Onde se per questa molta diligenza nostra, le avvenisse qualche caso sinistro, si rovinarebbe forse (il che Dio non voglie) ogni speranza della reduttione di quella patria, levando se le forze a questa buona e Catholica regina, overo alienando la de noi par offesa ricevuta."—Ibid.]

About the marriage Charles was more anxious than ever; Pole was understood to have declined the honour of being a competitor;[125] Renard had informed the emperor of the present direction of the queen's own inclinations; and treating himself, therefore, as out of the question on the score of age and infirmities, he instructed his minister to propose the Prince of Spain as a person whom the religious and the political interests of the world alike recommended to her as a husband. The alliance of England, Spain, and Flanders would command a European supremacy; their united fleets would sweep the seas, and Scotland, deprived of support from France, must become an English province; while sufficient guarantees could be provided easily for the security of English liberties. These, in themselves, were powerful reasons; Renard was permitted to increase their cogency by promises of pensions, lands, and titles, or by hard money in hand, in whatever direction such liberality could be usefully employed.[126]

[Footnote 125: "Ayant le Cardinal Pole si expressement declaire qu'il n'a nul desir de soy marier, et que nous tenons, que pour avoir si longuement suivi l'etat ecclesiastique, et s'accommode aux choses duysant a icelluy et estant diacre."—Charles V. to Renard: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 126: Ibid.]

{p.056} The external advantages of the connection were obvious; it recommended itself to the queen from the Spanish sympathies which she had contracted in her blood, and from the assistance which it promised to afford her in the great pursuit of her life. The proposal was first suggested informally. Mary affected to find difficulties; yet, if she raised objections, it was only to prolong the conversation upon a subject which delighted her. She spoke of her age; Philip was twenty-seven, she ten years older; she called him "boy;" she feared she might not be enough for him; she was unsusceptible; she had no experience in love;[127] with such other phrases, which Renard interpreted at their true importance. With the queen there would be no difficulty; with the council it was far otherwise. Lord Paget was the only English statesman who listened with any show of favour.

[Footnote 127: "Elle jura que jamais elle n'avoit senti esquillon de ce que l'on appelle amour, ny entre en pensement de volupte, etc."—Renard to the Bishop of Arras: Granvelle Papers, vol. iv.]

The complication of parties is not to be easily disentangled. Some attempt, however, may be partially successful.

The council, the peers, the Commons, the entire lay voices of England, liberal and conservative alike, were opposed to Rome; Gardiner was the only statesman in the country who thought a return to Catholic union practicable or desirable; while there was scarcely an influential family, titled or untitled, which was not, by grant or purchase, in possession of confiscated church property.

There was an equal unanimity in the dread that if Mary became the wife of a Spanish sovereign England would, like the Low Countries, sink into a provincial dependency; while, again, there was the utmost unwillingness to be again entangled in the European war; the French ambassador insisted that the emperor only desired the marriage to secure English assistance; and the council believed that, whatever promises might be made, whatever stipulations insisted on, such a marriage, sooner or later, would implicate them. The country was exhausted, the currency ruined, the people in a state of unexampled suffering, and the only remedy was to be looked for in quiet and public economy; there were attractions in the offer of a powerful alliance, but the very greatness of it added to their reluctance; they desired to isolate England from European quarrels, and marry their queen at home. With these opinions Paget alone disagreed, while Gardiner was loudly national.

{p.057} On the other hand, though Gardiner held the restoration of the papal authority to be tolerable, yet he dreaded the return of Pole, as being likely to supersede him in the direction of the English Church;[128] the party who agreed with the chancellor about the marriage, and about Pole, disagreed with him about the pope; while Paget, who was in favour of the marriage, was with the lords on the supremacy, and, as the Romanising views of the queen became notorious, was inclining, with Arundel and Pembroke, towards the Protestants.

[Footnote 128: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

No wonder, therefore, that the whole council were in confusion and at cross purposes. No sooner were Charles's proposals definitely known than the entire machinery of the government was dislocated. Mary represented herself to Renard as without a friend whom she could trust; and the letters, both of Renard and Noailles, contain little else but reports how the lords were either quarrelling, or had, one after the other, withdrawn in disgust to their country houses. Now it was Pembroke that was gone, now Mason, now Paget; then Courtenay was a prisoner in his house; then Lord Winchester was forbidden to appear at court: the ministers were in distrust of each other and of their mistress; the queen was condemned to keep them in their offices because she durst not make them enemies; while the Stanleys, Howards, Talbots, and Nevilles were glooming apart, indignant at the neglect of their own claims.

The queen herself was alternately angry and miserable; by the middle of September Renard congratulated Charles on her growing ill-humour; the five Dudleys and Lady Jane, he hoped, would be now disposed of, and Elizabeth would soon follow.

Elizabeth's danger was great, and proceeded as much from her friend's indiscretion as from the hatred of her enemies. Every one who disliked the queen's measures, used Elizabeth's name. Renard was for ever hissing his suspicions in the queen's ear, and, unfortunately, she was a too willing listener—not, indeed, that Renard hated Elizabeth for her own sake, for he rather admired her—or for religion's sake, for he had a most statesmanlike indifference to religion; but he saw in her the queen's successful rival in the favour of the people, the heir-presumptive to the crown, whose influence would increase the further the queen travelled on the road on which he was leading her, and, therefore, an enemy who, if possible, should be destroyed. An opportunity of creating a collision between the sisters was not long wanting. The lords of the council were {p.058} now generally present at mass in the royal chapel. Elizabeth, with Anne of Cleves, had as yet refused to appear. Her resistance was held to imply a sinister intention; and on the 2nd and 3rd of September the council were instructed to bring her to compliance.[129] Yet the days passed, the priest sang, and the heir to the crown continued absent. Gardiner, indeed, told Renard that she was not obdurate; he had spoken to her, and she had seemed to say that, if he could convince her, her objections would cease;[130] but they had not ceased so far; she did not attend. In the happiness of her first triumph Mary had treated Elizabeth like a sister, but her manner had relapsed into coldness; and the princess, at length, knowing how her name was made use of, requested a private interview, which, with difficulty, was granted. The sisters, each accompanied by a single lady, met in a gallery with a half-door between them. Elizabeth threw herself on her knees. She said that she perceived her majesty was displeased with her; she could not tell what the cause might be, unless it was religion; and for this, she said, she might be reasonably forgiven; she had been educated, as the queen was aware, in the modern belief, and she understood no other; if her majesty would send her books and teachers, she would read; she would listen; she could say no more.

[Footnote 129: Noailles to the King of France: Ambassades, vol. ii. p. 147.]

[Footnote 130: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

Mary, at the moment, was delighted. Like a true Catholic, however, she insisted that obedience must precede faith; come to the mass, she said, and belief will be the reward of your submission; make your first trial on the mass of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.[131]

[Footnote 131: Ibid.]

Elizabeth consented. She was present, but present reluctantly; pretending, as Renard said, to be ill; the next Sunday she was again absent. The queen, knowing the effect which her conduct would produce, again sent for her, and asked her earnestly what she really believed; the world said that, although she had complied once, her compliance was feigned, and that she had submitted out of fear; she desired to hear the truth. Elizabeth could reply merely that she had done as the queen had required her to do, with no ulterior purpose; if her majesty wished she would make a public declaration to that effect.[132] The queen was obliged to receive her answer; but she told Renard that her sister trembled as she spoke, and well, Renard said, he understood her agitation; she was the hope of the {p.059} heretics, and the heretics were raising their heads; the Papists, they said, had had their day, but it was waning; if Elizabeth lived, England would again apostatise.

[Footnote 132: Renard to Charles V., September 23: Ibid.]

There was no difficulty in keeping the queen's jealousy alive against her sister. Courtenay was another offence in the eye of the ambassador, as the rival to Philip, who found favour with the English council. The queen affected to treat Courtenay as a child; she commanded him to keep to his house; she forbade him to dine abroad without special permission; the title of Earl of Devon was given to him, and he had a dress made for him to take his seat in, of velvet and gold, but the queen would not allow him to wear it:[133] and yet, to her own and the ambassador's mortification, she learnt that he affected the state of a prince; that he spoke of his marriage with her as certain; that certain prelates, Gardiner especially, encouraged his expectation, and one or more of them had knelt in his presence.[134] The danger had been felt from the first that, if she persisted in her fancy for the Prince of Spain, Courtenay might turn his addresses to Elizabeth; the lords would in that case fall off to his support, and the crown would fall from her head as easily as it had settled there.

[Footnote 133: Noailles.]

[Footnote 134: Renard to Charles V., September 19: Rolls House MSS.]

More afflicting to Mary than these personal grievances was the pertinacity with which the council continued, in their public documents, to describe her as Head of the Church, the execrable title which was the central root of the apostasy. In vain she protested; the hateful form—indispensable till it was taken away by parliament—was thrust under her eyes in every paper which was brought to her for signature, and she was obliged to acknowledge the designation with her own hand and pen.

Amidst these anxieties, September wore away. Parliament was to open on the fifth of October, and either before or after the meeting the queen was to be crowned. The ceremony was an occasion of considerable agitation; Mary herself was alarmed lest the holy oil should have lost its efficacy through the interdict; and she entreated Renard to procure her a fresh supply from Flanders, blessed by the excellent hands of the Bishop of Arras. But the oil was not the gravest difficulty. As the rumour spread of the intended Spanish marriage, libellous handbills were scattered about London; the people said it should not be till they had fought for it. A disturbance at Greenwich, on the 25th of September, extended to Southwark, {p.060} where Gardiner's house was attacked,[135] and a plot was discovered to murder him: in the day he wore a shirt of mail under his robes, and he slept with a guard of a hundred men. Threatening notices were even found on the floor of the queen's bed-room, left there by unknown hands. Noailles assured the lords that his own government would regard the marriage as little short of a declaration of war, so inevitably would war be the result of it; and Gardiner, who was unjustly suspected of being in the Spanish interest, desired to delay the coronation till parliament should have met; intending that the first act of the assembly should be to tie Mary's hands with a memorial which she could not set aside. She inherited under her father's will, by which her accession was made conditional on her marrying not without the consent of the council; parliament might remind her both of her own obligation to obey her father's injunctions, and of theirs to see that they were obeyed.

[Footnote 135: Noailles; Renard.]

With the same object, though not with the same object only, the lords of the council supported the Bishop of Winchester. They proposed to alter the form of the coronation oath, and to bind the queen by an especial clause to maintain the independence of the English Church—a precaution, as it proved, not unnecessary—for the existing form was already inconvenient, and Mary was meditating how, when called on to swear to observe the laws and constitutions of the realm, she could introduce an adjective sub silentio; she intended to swear only that she would observe the JUST laws and constitutions.[136] But she looked with the gravest alarm to the introduction of more awkward phrases; if words were added which would be equivalent (as she would understand them) to a denial of Christ and his Church, she had resolved to refuse at all hazards.[137]

[Footnote 136: Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]

[Footnote 137: Ibid.]

But her courage was not put to the test. The true grounds on which the delay of the coronation was desired could not be avowed. The queen was told that her passage through the streets would be unsafe until her accession had been sanctioned by parliament, and the act repealed by which she was illegitimatised. With Paget's help she faced down these objections, and declared that she would be crowned at once; she appointed the 1st of October for the ceremony; on the 28th of September she sent for the council to attempt an appeal to their generosity. She spoke to them at length of her past life and sufferings, of the conspiracy to set her aside, and of the wonderful Providence {p.061} which had preserved her and raised her to the throne; her only desire, she said, was to do her duty to God and to her subjects; and she hoped, turning as she spoke, pointedly to Gardiner, that they would not forget their loyalty, and would stand by her in her extreme necessity. Observing them hesitate, she cried, "My lords, on my knees I implore you"—and flung herself on the ground at their feet.[138]

[Footnote 138: "Devant les quelz elle se mist a genoulx."—Renard to Charles V.: Rolls House MSS.]